I have always enjoyed creating characters and stories in my head. The Sims allows me to bring these to 'life'. My sims are very different from me (and each other), in fact my main sim is the opposite sex and a vampire, but I suppose there is naturally a bit of 'me' in all my characters. I also like to create my favourite characters from books/films etc. sometimes and I am often inspired by history, music, people, books, films etc. I usually plan out my characters in depth first i.e. their personality, background, appearance etc. before I create them in CAS. I like to find face claims/photos of real people to base their appearance on and when choosing outfits I also think about what suits their personality and background. I am a family player so I tend to create couples or families and I am also a supernatural fan so I often create occult sims. It takes me a ridiculously long time to finish creating a new sim, but it is a lot of fun.